Str 27, Int 18, Wis 3, Dex 20, Con 19, Cha 3
Armor Class: -4
Hit Points: 1,010
Class/level equivalent: M-U 20th, Ill. 10th
Alignment: Chaotic neutral
Move: 36”

Special abilities: Can cast 24 levels of spells per round of any
M-U type through 7th level. His curse (no s.t., 200-foot range)
makes a figure run in terror at the sight of a gold piece, faint at the
sight of a platinum piece, and die (no saving throw) if it lays eyes on a
gem.
 
 

Monty Mythos

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Dungeons & Dragons

The Adventures of Monty Haul
MONTY HAUL AND THE
BEST OF FREDDIE
by James M. Ward
(Dragon 24.42)

The Bronze Dragon was of tremendous size for its breed,
measuring over 80 hands long and able to rear to a height of more than
half that. The creature had gleaming claws as sharp and damaging as
scimitars; buffed with gold dust. Its fanged jaws were kept sharp by
biting heavy platemail vests that were a part of its horde. Its massive
scaled body rested regally on an altar made of its own gold and silver.
Chalices of platinum and coffers of gems and jewels were all about,
arranged to please the delicate sensibilities of the dragon. Its giant eyes,
that had been but a moment before closed in dragonslumber, opened,
aware of the tread of footsteps down the echoing marble corridor,
designed for just that echoing effect.

A knight, one of the paladin order, led the group into the dragon’s
lair. Normally the fighter would have dealth peaceably with this species
of dragonkind, but he could sense the evil inherent in it and he led the
others with a cry of battle. “Rumple Snits!” He was closely followed by
another warrior of proven powers but less worthy reputation. Behind
them were two age-old wizards, an archdruid bedecked in lincoln
green, and a bard of Canaith. All were in the act of casting spells to
subdue, rend, or otherwise ruin an otherwise perfectly healthy 500
year-old dragon. All of this effort was, of course, to no avail. A greenish
gas, smelling faintly of chlorine, belched forth from the dragon, covering
the entire group of adventurers. The screams from every human could
be heard echoing loudly down the marble corridor.

“Freddie!” said Monty, Brian, and Tim. “Bronze Dragons do not
breathe poison gas and they aren’t evil!”

“And,” interjected the rest of the adventurers, “Do you know the
odds of all of your spells not working? How come we couldn’t see the
dice rolls?"

Freddie, the DM, grinned sheepishly, knowing he had made a
mistake; perhaps more than one, but he had to cover it up with his own
illogic. “This breed of dragon has been mutated by close contact to
awesome magical forces and I say it spews chlorine gas!” Ever since
Monty bought a copy of Metamorphosis Alpha the guys had been
mutating things right and left, ad nauseum. This was really the last straw
for some of us. Brian, as his bard, pulled out his special Harp of Discord,
or was it Datcord?, and initiated its destructive properties; Tim, as his
archdruid, pulled out his oak wand and smashed the dragon with the
force of a forest; Monty (not to be outdone by a druid or a bard)
unpacked his Symbol of the Hammer and threw Lightning of the Gods
at the thing; Ernie unloosed an artifact he hadn’t even told us about; and
I, seeing what was happening to that poor beastie, used a wish from one
of my many wish rings to save what I could of the treasure horde being
subjected to the Gods only knew how much destructive energy. Need I
say it? The thing never had a chance; it’s quite one thing when you use
spells that allow for a saving throw, and quite another when you use
Artifacts of Power.

The treasure proved to be little more than the average run of the
mill stuff. The gold, silver, and gems were worth about 1,000,000 and
Ernie picked up a polymorph wand (he didn’t have one in his
collection); Tim would have happily grabbed the evil purpose sword
wrapped in demon skin, not because he could use it, but because he
could sell it, or, at least trade it, for something a druid could use (to better
the forest, of course). Joe, he of the paladin persuasion, naturally
insisted on its destruction and he couldn’t be refused or he’d pack up his
Holy Sword and go home. That’s what is so wrong about paladins, they
are so cursedly honest. Joe liked playing them and no one could dispute
that they didn’t have their place in the cosmic scheme of things. It really
cut down on the type of characters we could use around him. We all had
to take some of our more unusual flunkies or player characters, but
what the heck, it never hurt to rough it once in a while, and Freddie was
a lightweight as far as DM’s went and we should have been able to beat
his best. Ernie used his artifact to teleport each of our shares to each of
our holdings, except for the paladin, who took a small coffer of big
gems (for the Old Fighter's Home, of course).

A rough hewn passage led out of the dragon lair that was more
than big enogh to let the dragon pass. We traveled down it and came to
several interconnecting passages that we mapped thoroughly. For
Brian and I, mapping the dungeon was half the fun of playing the game.
We were always quick to correct each others’ errors when one or the
other had his map slightly off when connecting passages or chambers or
rooms. Unfortunately usually Brian doing the correcting.
Normally, we would have allowed the Balrog, three Gorgons, and
the Pyrohydra we ran across in our travels to continue their miserable
existences unmolested. They wouldn’t normally be worth our time and
effort. Joe, the paladin, couldn’t let us get away with that. So, we
snuffed the things and suffered in the process. Joe was turned to stone
by a Gorgon and there was a great deal of debate about unstoning him,
with him looking on in stony horror. Our alignments and the
marvelousness of his holy sword decided the issue. I zapped him back
and we trudged on until we came to the entrance to the “Caverns of the
Artificer.” We knew that because it was written all over the door we
broke down to get in (Freddie was far from subtle). The first thing we ran
into a batch of five Wizards of at least the 16th level because they were
tossing eight level spells at us. That didn’t bother Joe until they started
summoning 6th level monsters. They came up with a gold dragon, an
iron golem, and a vampire; in a series of random? rolls that were very
hard to believe. In the ensuing battle, we used up Brian’s harp, about 8
pounds of oak and mistletoe branches, Ernie’s character, and Joe’s holy
sword, but we killed the 5 wizards. They had some magic items none of
us had ever seen before and we just plopped them in Ernie’s portable
hole along with the pieces of Ernie’s character that even a wish couldn’t
bring back. Our computers could usually figure out anything we gave
them to analyze. They should, after all; we had to use deomon energy to
power the things.

We were hurting as a group, but we didn’t want to call this dungeon
quits until we came across Freddie’s best level encounter. Then we
entered a marble veneered hall and knew we had hit the Freddie
“jackpot.”

Every DM has his or her own mannerisms that an experienced
player should be able to pick up on and gain clues from. Monty stopped
smiling when any of his groups were doing too well and he started
grinning when we were about to get really crunched. Tim started piling
on the detail in every one of his descriptions as if that would keep us
from grabbing all the goodies to be found in his dungeon. I am even told
that I start to stall and multiply by a factor of ten all the original monsters I
had guarding a particularly fine treasure, but that’s a gross exaggeration
of the facts. [Oh, No! It’s not. Ed.] Anyway, Freddie always started to
talk fast when we came near something he didn’t want us to destroy. He
was talking a mile a minute as we mapped out an area with a huge
section at the center of our maps that was enclosed by corridors. This
was just shouting secret door, so Joe used his belt of Storm Giant
Strength and a stone club, and bashed the walls until we hit the secret
door. Instead of attacking an already worned batch of thingies behind
the door, I wished us into the past a few hours with all the knowledge we
had gained up until the time of the wish. Naturally, Freddie rolled us up
a wandering monster and we had to fight a batch of Specres that hit us
far too often and forced me to use a couple more wishes to get our levels
back.

We crashed through the secret door and saw a group of women
praying in front of an altar made out of what seemed to be weaving
plants. The women were barely dressed in silks and jewelry and they all
turned to face us when we came crashing into the place. It has always
been my experience that D&D® is the one truly liberated women game;
one of the few gamers where a women can be as terrifying and as
powerful as a man and these women were no exception. The paladin
was able to tell these ladies were evil through and through, and we
moved in on them and cast spells. They each had a ring of spell turning
on, and we were innundated with spells of charming and confusing. I
was confused and started wandering away. Their attacks were all high
level clerical spells and a gate spell caused a face to appear in the
vegetable altar. Somehow they made Joe deaf and slowed him down
and those plants were animated and started to move towards us at an
alarming rate.

The plant altar was obviously Tim’s department and he threw a
druidic anti-plant spell on himself and charged the thing. Monty took
care of my wandering with a dispell magic. Joe, the paladin, hadn’t
decided yet whether he could cleave a barely dressed woman, but the
death ray one of them threw at him made up his mind quickly. Their
round didn’t hurt us a bit and Monty used up the last of his Thunder
Symbols and killed two of the seven ladies. Brian started composing
poetry while putting out his (what else?) singing sword. Brian was very
good at D&D®, but like all of us he really threw himself into his character
and his poetry was really strange. It was good that his powers allowed us
to hit the enemy better, but the poetry was like a fire ball in the guts. The
ladies took care of Joe with five death rays. We took care of all save one,
who must have been the high priestess, with area spells. Tim, we were
told, was immersed in a ball of vegetation connected to the altar. That
lasted until he cast his turn wood spell. Those druids are really handy
against wood; unfortunately, the face in the altar gave a nod Tim’s way
and the vegetation only grew the faster, changing to a much darker
shade of green and becoming immune to the waves of druidic force. On
the priestess’ turn, she leapt on two of her dead comrades’ bodies,
touched two others, and the whole group vanished. My plane shifting
artifact recorded the fact that she went to another plane, but we were
soon too busy to worry about grabbing her. The stupid altar was
starging to give the archdruid problems of the lethal kind. Somehow it
was resisting all of his druid spells (much to the vocal irritation of the
character) and he was forced to chop his way out with his scimitar.
Monty and I weren’t worried, after all we were wizards of power!!
used a wall of force to protect us while Monty pitched a 29 die fire ball at
the altar. All that was left of the thing were a few stumps on a green stone
and the face of a badly singed angry looking head suspended above it.
We hadn’t started counting our phoenix eggs before they were hatched;
we tried fire balls again, but none of us thought they would work (and
they didn’t). The altar started growing like an ad for grass fertilizer and
the vines started reaching toward us, but this time the dark green plants
had a white powder on them. This allowed the thing to pass right
through our force wall and it became clear that magic on the plants
wouldn’t work. Monty and I used Tenser’s Transformation and drew
our +4 daggers, and, with Brian and Tim, we all started chopping with
ot weapons and easily cleared the growth. We chopped it down to the
stumps again, but it grew faster than we could cut and this time there
were golden flecked scales on the plants that caused our weapons to
slide off of every stem.

The time for simple measures were long over and we were playing
for keeps now. Monty cut loose with his ring of Gax. Brian winded his
Horn of Change. I pulled out my Jacinth of Inestimable Beauty,
covered my eyes (including my astral eye) and activated the “orange
glow.” When Tim pulled out his Rod of Seven Parts, we all knew the
game was really do or die. That thing was more dangerous to the user
and the entire dungeon that it was to the thing it faced. Plus the fact that
Tim told Freddie that he was activating all seven parts at once
(something he had never done and we had always feared he would do).
Our unnamed enemy went poof, the altar and much of that area of the
chamber also went poof under the effects of the forces that we let loose.
Astoundingly, we were still alive after what we had started. We
sacked the place and put it all in the center of the chamber for
teleportation purposes and it was back! That was it as far as I was
concerned and I soon found out that it was the same with the other
guys. We had taken some heavy duty shots and they hadn’t been
enough. It was time to cut out losses and run. We all magicked ouselves
out of there, back to our separate strongholds. I imagined myself resting
with my master in his hold and telling him of the power of that plant
thing. Freddie ended the adventure by telling us that we were hearing
screams from the tower wall guards describing the creeping of white
power, gold flecked, plant vines all over the walls . . .